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Illustrated World History Europe |
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Menu Forward Back |  The Overthrow of Varus After an old German painting. By repeated attacks the Germans utterly destroyed the Roman army of Varus. |
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Menu Forward Back |  Hermann's Triumph over Varus Painted by Professor Paul Thumann, a noted German artist born on the Lausitania in 1834. The Germans celebrate their victory over Varus in their pagan fashion. More than a century after the destruction of the Teutones in France, the Roman Empire under Augustus attempted the conquest of the German forests. The tribes they met there was no longer so ignorant as the Teutones had been. Communication with the world had taught them much. Many had entered the Roman armies. One of them was Hermann of the Cherusci tribe. When he returned home he decided to become a patriot. He saw the Germans must fight or become slaves. As a result he organized a secret uprising against the Romans, and when the legions of Varus marched from Xanten (just west of Wesel), along the Lippe River toward the town of Wesel (6.6 east & 51.7 north) and later north of Osnabrück near a place called Engter, were evidence locates a battle ground. Herman led his army in repeated, furious hit and run charges, and the entire Roman army was annihilated. - The illustration shows the triumphal procession when the people celebrated the restoration of their recently imperiled freedom. Hermann, with his Roman prisoners, rides past a pagan altar grimly decorated with the skulls of horses. It is to be feared that human victims were also sacrificed to the German gods like Wotan, and that many of the Roman prisoners suffered such a fate which many of them inflicted on their victims. - Researchers concluded that the Roman camp of Aliso, because of similarity of name to Elsey in Bergkamen-Oberaden, where Oberaden is today part of Lünen (7.51 east & 51.6 north), must have been its location. It is known that Drusus after the battle at Arbalo, where from he just barely escaped alive, reached a camp at the confluence of the Lippe and the Elison River. The Lippe River is still called that today but the Elison is now thought to be the Seseke River by the city of Lünen. This is at least one of the possible identifications for Aliso. |
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Menu Forward Back |  Hermann's Unhappy Romance Painted by Henry König. Hermann's life was darkened by a tragic romance. There was a feud between his family and that of Segestes, another German chieftain; but Hermann met and loved Thusnelda, the daughter of Segestes. She fled from home at his wooing and they were married; but their union only widened the breach with Segestes. He joined the Romans in antagonism to Hermann; and when, after the defeat of Varus, young Germanicus led the Romans into Germany, Segestes became their chief ally. He entrapped Hermann and Thusnelda and threw them into a prison. Hermann made a daring escape and rallied his followers against Segestes and the Romans. Germanicus wanted the glory of a triumph at the capital and, since he could win no victory over Hermann himself, the wily Roman made Thusnelda the central figure of his triumphal procession, and paraded her in Rome as the captured queen of the Germans. - Hermann sought to win back his wife but Rome was inaccessible to him. Segestes fled from Germany and was imprisoned by the Romans where his life ended. Hermann was slain in one of the endless battles between the German tribes. |
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Menu Forward Back |  The Retreat of Germanicus Painted by Ferdinand Leeke of Germany. Great was the consternation of all the people at Rome at the defeat of Varus. There was a danger that the exulting Germans would march at once on Rome; but the general now in command against them was the able Triberius, whom Augustus had adopted as his son and successor. The well-chosen measures kept the Germans from crossing the Rhine and invading the Roman province of Gaul; and when, on the death of Augustus, Tiberius succeeded him, the new emperor sent his adopted son Germanicus, to guard the frontier against the Germans. - The warfare between Germanicus and Hermann was long and equally sustained. Three times Germanicus led his troops across the Rhine into the German forests; but each time he was so assailed amid the wilds that he withdrew and left Germany unconquered. The Rhine was accepted as the permanent frontier. |
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Menu Forward Back |  The Ways of Sin in Rome. Engraving by L.H. Fischer. Tiberius (14-37 AD) 
, who succeeded the celebrated Augustus who had taxed the Jewish State, leading the mother of the yet unborn child to end up in Judaic Bethlehem, was present by the obsequious Senate with all the titles and offices which Augustus had borne so well. Yet, Tiberius became harsh, stern, and wicked in his heart. Of him the Bible says,
"Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." Luke 3:1,2. Tiberius then was a contemporary of Jesus Christ. His representative Pilate in Judea became instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ - to say the least - not an enviable period in history from the point of view of one who does not know the gospel or would be inclined to search it out. Satan's legions were busy everywhere. They sowed war and strife in the farthest reaches of the world to keep man from seeking God. - Unchristian authors comment thus, `As a result of the unbridled power of Tiberius, his dark suspicions and his murderous savagery, the truly noble men of the old Roman race were almost exterminated. Only subservient flatterers remained. Henceforth the city of Rome was plunged into nameless treachery, and shameless debauchery. - As Tiberius grew old, he grew ever more murderous, more suspicious and more licentious. He withdrew entirely from Rome, were an assassin might reach him, and dwelt on the Island of Capri. Here he is said to have given himself up to mad frolics, surrounded by a crowd and abandoned wretches as evil as himself. They ate, drank and were merry in the face of death; for any one of them who offended Tiberius was immediately slain; being hurled from the terrible cliff almost a thousand feet in height, which is still pointed out today as "the rock of Tiberius."
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 The Emperor Worship of Caligula Original painted by G. Bauernfield of Germany. At the death of Tiberius, the rule over Rome passed on to a young relative. 
Caligula (37-41), son of that Germanicus who had fought so resolutely against the Germans. Caligula started his reign in wise and kindly fashion, but within a few months changed so completely that he is generally supposed to have become insane. Here is a list of what ripe Paganism will do to people. He committed the craziest freaks, plunged into the grossest dissipation, and delighted in the most hideous cruelties. He led an army against England; but, stopping at the shores of France, he set his soldiers to collecting sea shells. Then he marched back to Rome and exhibited these as the "spoils of his conquest of the ocean." It was Caligula who wished that all Romans had but a single neck so he might behead them all at once. - He compelled the obsequious Senate to declare him a god - in fact several gods, for at one time he decided to be Hercules, at another Venus, then Bacchus. Finally he settled on being Jupiter, and had the heads removed from Jupiter's statues and his own likeness substituted. He had himself carried in religious procession through the Forum from his own palace on one Roman hill to the temple of Jupiter (the devil) on another, and he built a bridge joining the two hills, so that he and the other gods might visit each other freely without being disturbed by mere mortals. A devout worshipper of the sun god as he was, he decreed that the very large obelisk be brought to Rome in 37 AD. The obelisk is one thought to be from the reign of 12th Dynasty king Nebkaure Amenemhet (II), and had originally stood in the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. Later it was erected by Nero in the center of Caligula's circus to be part of the chariot races often dedicated to Mithra.
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